That's the number of photos I have shot for the Edge of Propinquity in the six years since Jennifer asked me to help. Most of those photos have never seen the light of day. I still remember the day when ideas started coming together ver clearly. Jennifer and I used to work at the same software shop in Kirkland, Washington, building software for attorneys. Over lunch we would often take walks together as means of simply getting out of the office. Frequently during these walks we would bat ideas around like kittens with a favorite toy. As is the nature of ideas, some of them soared, some of them floundered, and others really weren't that air worthy to begin with. But one of the ideas that did soar started off humbly enough.

It was during one such walk up Lake Washington Boulevard when Jennifer said to me, and I'm para-phrasing pretty liberally here, "I want to turn the web site into a webzine for short stories." As someone who loves the short story format, this was golden as far as I could tell. "I want to illustrate it with black and white photos. Would you help me with that?" I'm sure you could guess what my response was and if you said the response was enthusiastic, you'd be on the right track.

We hashed out the important details for the photos like resolution and file formats and the next thing I knew, we were spending a cold, sunny, December Sunday in Seattle taking photographs. We walked along the path that says "MAZE", over the I-90 Mount Baker Tunnels; you can even see those painted letters, if only barely, on Google Maps. We even took photographs of the pedestrian tunnel as well. We wandered through downtown Seattle and took photos of roads and pedestrians and shot glasses. Overpasses and bridges filled my view finder as well. Even the University of Washington campus was our play ground that day. We were exploring the world around us to get a visual feel for the world Jennifer had created and figure out what was allowed and what wasn't. That day, I shot over 260 photos

Several of those initial photos became iconic components of the Edge of Propinquity. The Mount Baker Pedestrian Tunnel figures into at least three images put together for the webzine, including the banner image and one print advertisement. Those were just the beginning. I produced images for all 12 of Jennifer's Kendrick stories, three of Ivan's Vorare series, and the eight guest author stories for the first year and thing never really slowed down since then.

But the greatest treasure for me was getting to read all of the stories. Those stories all touched me in some fashion, whether they were urban fantasy, mystery, or even just good-old-fashion horror. Even the stories that didn't make into my mostest-favoritest list still had impact. My favorite stories were ones with interesting protagonists dealing with morally ambiguous issues, when the best choice still isn't a good way to go or the story where there's a monster in the darkness and the only thing that will keep it away is the charm of a child. Of course, that'll only work if you're lucky.

Looking over the edge like that was an honor and a privilege. While I am sad to see her go, TEOP had and amazing run and ended on solid ground.